Adolescence is a messy, awkward journey filled with emotional peaks and valleys. If you could turn back time, would you take back that awful, if honest, thing you said to your mom? Would you reconnect with that old friend you grew apart from? Would you save that unpopular girl from getting hit by a football, roadside splash, or pool noodle? Life is Strange Remastered packages these teenage, time-traveling woes into an entrancing story that achieves the high stakes you’d want from a great season of a TV drama while touching upon some very raw and real emotions.
First, why write this review now? While the complete Life is Strange Remastered dropped in 2022, the original Life is Strange released its five episodes from January through October 2015, meaning we’ve recently passed the ten-year anniversary of its conclusion. While new Life is Strange titles have continually released since, this March’s Life is Strange: Reunion will finally revisit both of the original game’s protagonists, Max and Chloe. I encourage readers to check out Jerry Williams’ 2015 reviews of Episode 1: Chrysalis, Episode 2: Out of Time, Episode 3: Chaos Theory, Episode 4: Dark Room, and Episode 5: Polarized.
The seaside town of Arcadia Bay, Washington, is rocked by the disappearance of young Rachel Amber, a bright student at the town’s prestigious Blackwell Academy. Enter 18-year-old Max Caulfield, returning after several years to her native Arcadia Bay to study photography at Blackwell. When Max witnesses her childhood best friend, Chloe Price, gunned down over a botched drug deal on campus, Max discovers her ability to rewind time. With her newfound powers, Max spares Chloe her tragic fate and ignites a weeklong adventure that will uncover the mystery behind the missing Rachel Amber, throw the natural world into disarray, and maybe, just maybe, snag Max a date to the drive-in movies.
Narratively, Life is Strange has aged very well in that its heightened American drama would nestle neatly among ultra-popular, small-town paranormal TV series that followed it, such as Stranger Things or Wednesday. In turn, Life is Strange pays clear homage to its many inspirations: various license plates reference Twin Peaks or Donnie Darko, many story beats mirror The Butterfly Effect, and Max Caulfield and her journey with self-expression are a nod to The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield.
Sure, it’s clearly a French dev team indulging in Americanophilia, but this gives the game a certain timelessness (if you’ll excuse the pun). As the opening track from composer Jonathan Morali sings: “I wish I had an American girlfriend…”
Episode 1 of Life is Strange especially feels like a pastiche of Americanisms with its introduction of the cast. Thankfully, many of the paper-thin side characters (students and staff at Blackwell Academy) are fleshed out and become more endearing with later episodes. The real draw, though, is Max and Chloe. Max goes from a self-cringing, selfie-taking outcast to a strong and empathetic young adult. Chloe, who seems inseparable from tragedy, drops her punk, laissez-faire wall brick by brick, as only she shares in the knowledge of Max’s time-rewinding powers. Max’s love for Chloe will quickly become your love for Chloe.
Gameplay is mainly exploring Blackwell and Arcadia Bay as Max and talking with the familiar cast. Dialogue lines are unskippable unless you’ve heard them before. The voice acting is earnest and believable from Max and Chloe, though many side characters feel like they’re intentionally hamming up their archetypes, be they jock, skater, or… squirrel-whispering janitor?
Rewinding time lets you tell characters what they want to hear, or else navigate a conversational puzzle. Many points funnel you into more linear paths and environmental puzzles that can be menial rather than mentally stimulating. Episode 2 may make you wonder, did Max gain time-control powers just so she can collect bottles in a junkyard or pick up boxes without clumsily knocking something over? But mostly, the puzzles are varied enough that their spotty quality never detracts from the intertwining narratives or the great narrative pacing.
This being my second playthrough, the years have cemented a kind of 2010s time capsule quality to Life is Strange. I was born in the same year as the main characters, and though I may cringe at early dialogue like “ubercool” and “amazeballs,” I’m certainly not innocent of a few “cool beans” myself.
The licensed soundtrack, featuring indie acts like Bright Eyes, Local Natives, Alt-J, and Mogwai, might as well be lifted from the iPod of a Canadian teen just tryna be cool. With every movie reference or bad pun in the script, there’s just as much chance for a character to call out another character (or themselves) for trying too hard. This is art and life eating each other’s tails.
I won’t spoil any more of the story because I truly recommend today’s teenagers to give it a try, but I appreciate how Life is Strange tackles heavy issues like sexual assault, cyber-bullying, and drug use so bluntly (pun definitely intended this time). Though that all may seem like standard TV fare, these are topics seldom explored in gaming even today, and rarely this well. Do you, as Max, stand by and watch Chloe’s stepfather hit her for smoking weed in her room, or do you take the fall knowing the consequences will come back to bite you later?
Max’s ability to rewind time means you can see the immediate ramifications of either course, though there’s no telling what comes later. The heavy choices in Life is Strange go from mere hurt feelings in the early episodes to life-or-death decisions by game’s end.
Seven years between the PS3 originals and the PS4 Remastered collection seems to have done quite little in terms of visuals and performance, sadly. The newer version does feature facial capture performances for some of the main characters, though the smoothed-out textures now make faces plasticky and environments blotchy. In general, Life is Strange Remastered leans more heavily into its borderline Impressionist art direction, often beautiful at a distance yet uncanny up close.
Episode 4’s textures look especially ugly, though the visuals pull back up for the grand finale in Episode 5. I wish the whole package had been given a proper makeover, given the game’s popularity and the years between the original and Remastered releases.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a notorious, nearly game-breaking bug where Max phases through the environment at a narratively sensitive moment in Episode 4 that has still never been addressed, and I only bypassed it with many a Google search and restarted checkpoint. All this to say, if the original Life is Strange is more readily available, it’s not a downgrade.
Life is Strange takes its time setting up a complex pattern of narrative dominoes that fall in increasingly compelling and emotional ways from the end of Episode 3 right up until a gut-wrenching final decision in Episode 5. Its TV-inspired tropes may turn off as many players as it draws in, but it ultimately delivers on its time-warping premise in ways that would make even Ray Bradbury or David Lynch do a double-take. Though the Remastered version doesn’t bring the amazeballs visual improvements this story deserves, this is still an experience I’d readily put in the hands of any teenager, gamer or not.
